S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 30

Film Critics

I'm going to stop trusting film critics if this keeps up.

A while ago I watched the movie Uncut Gems staring Adam Sandler in a serious role.

Uncut Gems got a 92% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. So I thought it would be a good movie. And in ways, it was. Sandler does an amazing job in his role. But the movie itself was dark, depressing, and noisy. Often you couldn't hear the main dialog for other people talking, especially at the first of the movie. I hated that talk-over style when Robert Altman did it and I didn't like it here.

So, despite it's high ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, I just didn't like the movie.

This has happened more than once. There was a movie called Spring Breakers. Okay, I'll admit, part of the reason I watched it was because Selena Gomez was in it (about half of it).  But it got a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes. So I expected at least a decent movie. But it sucked. Yes, I know its message was about the nihilism of young people. But at least it could have been entertaining. For example, The Good Liar got a 63% on Rotten Tomatoes. But I enjoyed that movie.

I recently watched Date Night. And it got 66% on Rotten Tomatoes. That seems about right. The movie was occasionally funny, but it seemed to waste the talents of its stars.

Then there was Knives Out. It was 97% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. But I found it disjointed, not well acted, and the twist at the end was...not predictable, but not a surprise, either.

On the other side, Ford v Ferrari got 92% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and I loved it. But that was a lower score than Knives Out. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, which is my favorite movie ever, got only 93% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Again, less than Knives Out.

Maybe I should stop relying on film critics to choose films.

How do you choose movies to watch? Do you rely on critics or some other method. Let me know in the comments.

Spin

Read these two fictional news reports:

Today the governor proposed a plan to widen Highway 17 to four lanes. This will save lives, he said. The package includes other highway improvements and will be paid for by an increase in the gas tax.

Or...

The governor proposed a gas tax increase today. This is part of a package of highway improvements. One project proposed is to widen Highway 17 to four lanes. The governor claims that it will save lives.

Which statement makes you feel better about the governor (especially if you have to drive on Highway 17)? Each statement has the same basic facts but presented in a different way.

Each statement has a different "spin" on it and a skilled writer can do this almost without thinking based on his or her preferences or prejudices. Spin happens all the time in the news business. Reports might say they are reporting the facts, but how do they report them? (Never mind that some reporters don't report the facts, or the facts they don't like, but that's not what we're talking about here.)

A skillful speaker can spin with their voice, giving the right tone to each word to emphasis what they want. Politicians do this all the time.

In fiction writing you can use spin, too, in the way you describe things or events. Ramp up the tension with the right word choices and putting them in a certain order. Again, a skilled writer can do that almost without thinking.

Do you see spin in news reports? Do you watch out for spin? Let me know in the comments below.

Progress

1977 Pontiac Trans AmA while back I came across Smokey and the Bandit on television. If you're not familiar with this movie, it was the second highest grossing film of 1977. A film called Star Wars was number one.

Smokey and the Bandit is a comedy starring Burt Reynolds. Sally Fields, and Jerry Reed (best known as a country singer). It also stars Jackie Gleason. It is basically one long car chase across the American Southeast. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it as mindless fun entertainment.

In the movie, Burt Reynolds drives an iconic black Pontiac Trans Am. This was one of the fastest, most powerful cars you could buy in 1977. According to the Internet Movie Database, there were three Trans Ams used for filming and all three were pretty much destroyed at the end.

But it got me wondering, how powerful was a 1977 Trans Am? So, Google to the rescue, I found out that a 1977 Trans Am had 210 horsepower and 325 lb-ft of torque. It had a top speed (red line limited) of 110 mph (which was, admittedly, double the nation speed limit of 55 mph). Red line limited means that at the fastest speed the engine could go, in top gear, that's the fastest the car can go. It went 0-60 in 9.3 seconds. I put some of this information on the Internet Movie Database.

But... a 2019 Toyota Sienna (a minivan and I don't think it was made in 2020) has 296 horsepower and 263 ft-lb of torque. So the Trans Am does have more torque (torque gets you going, horsepower makes you go faster). And the Sienna's top speed is 115 mph probably governor limited. A governor is an electronic limit to how fast a car can go. And, the Sienna does 0-60 in 6.9 seconds.

The Sienna probably gets better gas mileage and pollutes a lot less, too. (I read once that a modern Mustang pollutes less going down the road then a sixties Mustang did sitting in the driveway.)

So why does a modern minivan out-perform a 42-year-old sports car? It's call "progress." Engineering and technological advancements have made cars faster, safer, and pollute less. Unfortunately, they cost a lot more.

For example, the Trans Am cost $5,456.00 new. That's $23,083 in 2020 dollars. The Seinna costs $31,315. A Chevrolet Camaro SS (the closest modern equivalent to the Trans Am) costs $38,495 without any options. So that's $15,411 more for the new Camaro in inflation-adjusted dollars. So, yes, cars do cost more. But that Camaro SS has 455 horsepower and 455 ft-lb of torque. It goes 0-60 in 4.0 seconds and has a top speed of 198 mph. That's a lot more go for $15,000.

Okay, so cars are faster and more powerful. But they are also safer. Watch this video of a Nissan Sentra hitting a Sentra model sold in Mexico that doesn't have modern U.S. safety standards. It's oblivious the U.S. car does much better in the crash. The driver of the older model car probably would have sustained numerous bad injuries if not just been killed.

Can you think of other examples of progress? Let me know in the comments below.

Independence Day

Today is July 4th. But the holiday is called "Independence Day." That's to remind you that around this day in 1776, the United States declared its independence from England.

So, "Happy Independence Day." Spend some time today to be thankful for the freedoms you enjoy.

Counting Four Items

The other day I was counting the pills I take every morning to make sure I hadn't forgotten any. I take sixteen, including the non-prescription supplements (I know, that's a lot). So I put them in four piles of four. Why? Because four is the highest number I can count without counting one, two, three, four, five... In other words, I can look at four or less items, and know how many they are. I can't do that with five or more. Even if it's five. My brain won't look at it and say "four plus one."

I once, many years ago, said this to a co-worker and she looked at me as if I were crazy. So I never again brought it up,  until now. See how much I trust you people!

Maybe other people can count more. I don't know. Can you?

I've hidden my shame for over thirty-five years, now. Can you count more than four without counting? Let me know in the comments below.

My First Car

My first car was a candy apple red 1965 Ford Mustang. It was plastic. But it was, I could tell even at my young age, high quality plastic. It might have looked a lot like the one in the picture.

I've had a lot of cars such as it over the years. Lots of Hot Wheels. I had a blue Jeep pickup that I still have. I don't know what happened to the white horse trailer or the horses that came with it.

I also built a lot of cars out of Legos. S. Evan Townsend original designs. I tended to put jet engines (red Legos) on them.
The Blue Jeep Pickup
But toys were my first introduction to cars. And, if you've read this blog, you know I like cars. I totally understand why Jay Leno owns so many cars (286 according to Google). There are so many cool cars with different personalities and different capabilities. If I were rich enougj, I would have 286 cars, probably.

At one time I owned seven cars (long story). Now I own only two. And of those seven cars, only four were cool, the rest were my son's cars and I didn't buy them "cool" cars.

How do you feel about cars? Did you have any cool toy cars as a kid? Let me know in the comments below.

Confirmation

The EquationI saw somewhere that CuriosityStream had a sale going, a full year for only $12. I thought that was a bargain so I signed up. I've watched three things, so far. One on Venus where I'm debating having a scene in my current work in progress, one on quantum mechanics, and one on the Cassini probe called Cassini, the Grand Finale. That show talked about Saturn's moon, Enceladus which has cryovolcanoes. They mentioned how fast the material (water, mostly) is ejected from the moon. It leaves the volcanoes at 1,200 mph. And that  number sounded familiar.

A little over six years ago, I blogged about Io's volcanoes and how fast the material that comes out of them is exiting the volcanoes.

Io is one of the moons of Jupiter.

Using the gravity of Io and how high the plumes go, I calculated (using the equation above) that the material must exit the volcanoes at 1,075 meters per second (or 1.075 km/s) to reach the altitude they do (as high as 200 miles over the surface of the moon). And, according to Wikipedia, the correct figure is 1 km/s. Or 2,236 miles per hour. That's pretty fast. Faster even than Enceladus.

But what I was glad about, what that my calculations six years ago were mostly confirmed. The source Wikipedia used might have rounded down to one significant figure and if I do that, I get the same answer (1 km/s).

Flag Day

It's Flag Day in the U.S. Not a well-known holiday, but it is an excuse to use my flag picture:

The Eyes Have It.

LilyEyes amaze me.

For example, my son's cat's eyes. Her name is Lily and sometimes I look at her eyes and just marvel what an amazing creation eyes are. The cornea is the most stunning part. It's living tissue yet it's completely transparent. (Well, except in my case because I'm developing cataracts.) Lily will turn her head and I can see through her cornea. I wish I had a picture of that.

And I recently visited my son and his wife. But I was really there to see my grandson. And he has amazing blue eyes. They remind me of the eyes I had when I was younger, before the blue started to fade. (He also has red hair, like his grandfather, so he's my favorite grandchild.)(He's my only grandchild, so
Beautiful Eyesfar).

Or when I meet a person I'll look into their eyes and that seems to make them more real and human to me. They say eyes are the window to the soul. But I think you can tell a lot from people's eyes. They might be bright and happy or sad. Or dead-looking like a doll's eyes. I have seen that, but not often. But the eyes are one of the first things I notice about a person.

According to this website, an eye can transmit 100 million bits of information a second.  That's about as fast as my fiber optic internet connection. But eyes are organic, not electronic. So I think that's pretty amazing.

As I said, eyes amaze me. How do you feel about eyes? Let me know in the comments below.

Ford v Ferrari

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I am about to make a proclamation: Ford v Ferrari is the second best movie about car racing ever (the best is, of course, 1966's Grand Prix).

Ford v Ferrari puts you in the driver's seat of powerful, fast, and ultimately deadly cars. I regret now not seeing it in the theater because I'm sure on the large screen with a movie theater's sound it would have blown me away. On my television screen with my 5.1 surround sound, it blew me away.

I don't know how historically accurate the film is. Part of the story I already knew about how Ford wanted to beat Ferrari at the 24 hour race at Le Mans in France. They didn't do it the first time in 1965, but they did in 1966. The car they used was the Ford GT40 (the modern Ford GT is a tribute to that car).

The drama in the movie comes from trying to build a car to win at Le Mans and the corporate interference of FoMoCo. The last half hour of the film is pretty much the 1966 race at Le Mans. Somehow with sound and visuals, the director puts you in the car feeling all the tension, noise, speed, danger, and exhilaration of racing.

My only beef with the film is that there are lots of scenes of feet on car pedals (brake, gas, clutch) during shifts but never is there a heel and toe downshift (see the first moments of Grand Prix to know what that is) even during the downshifts.

And the movie isn't only about cars, It's about the personalities of Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles (played to perfection by Christian Bale) and how they faced the risk-adverse corporate types at Ford.

And even today you can buy a Mustang Shelby Cobra GT500 from Ford in honor of Carroll Shelby.

I rarely give a movie five stars on Netflix. I did this one.

Note: I'm reviewing this films so late because Netflix didn't send it to me for at least 12 weeks after it came out on Blu-Ray even though it was at the top of my queue the entire time. I watched it last night.